Weight-loss surgery works much better than standard medical therapy as a treatment for Type 2 diabetes in obese people, the first study to compare the two approaches has found.

The study, of 60 patients, showed that 73 percent of those who had surgery had complete remissions of diabetes, meaning all signs of the disease went away. By contrast, the remission rate was only 13 percent in those given conventional treatment, which included intensive counseling on diet and exercise for weight loss, and, when needed, diabetes medicines like insulin, metformin and other drugs.

In the study, the surgery worked better because patients who had it lost much more weight than the medically treated group did — 20.7 percent versus 1.7 percent of their body weight, on average. Type 2 diabetes is usually brought on by obesity, and patients can often lessen the severity of the disease, or even get rid of it entirely, by losing about 10 percent of their body weight. Though many people can lose that much weight, few can keep it off without surgery.

Yeah, I don’t know about this. I mean, maybe it’s a good idea, if you consider serious complications a key component of success. Hopefully this chart will help you think twice before you run out and get your tummy sliced open. Take a look:

The startling discovery, announced yesterday, prompted federal health officials to immediately halt one part of the large trial so thousands of the Type 2 diabetes patients in the study could switch to less-intensive treatment.

"As always, our primary concern is to protect the safety of our study volunteers," said Elizabeth G. Nabel, director of the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, which is sponsoring the study.

Although the reason for the increased risk remains a mystery, Nabel and other experts stressed that the benefits of blood sugar control have been well established for diabetics and said patients should not make any changes in their care without consulting their doctors.

But the findings cast doubt on a major hope about diabetes treatment -- that pushing levels below current targets would be beneficial -- and would force experts to rethink how to treat one of the nation's leading health problems.

"It's profoundly disappointing," said Richard Kahn, chief scientific and medical officer for the American Diabetes Association. "This presents a real dilemma to patients and their physicians. How intensive should treatment be? We just don't know."

The findings are the second major blow to widespread assumptions about how to protect against heart disease -- the nation's leading killer. Another recent major study found that driving blood cholesterol levels as low as possible did not necessarily slow the progression of heart disease.

As you can imagine, Dr. Fuhrman was less than surprised by these results. Here’s what he had to say about it. Have a look:

It basically illustrates that giving diabetics more medication to better control their glucose numbers leads to more heart attacks; more medicine equals more heart attacks. Diabetes is a disease arising out of nutritional ignorance, obesity and lack of exercise and activity. The prescription must be nutritional excellence for an excellent outcome. Most diabetics who follow a nutrient-dense vegetable-based diet not only reduce their medication use, but they actually get rid of their diabetes and become non-diabetic.

So, back to Dr. Fuhrman’s original question, “How can diabetics safely lower the high glucose levels that are slowly destroying their bodies?” Well—as we just found out—nutritional excellence is a huge part of it. More form Dr. Fuhrman:

I have achieved marked success with diabetic patients and the success at becoming "non diabetic" or almost "non-diabetic" regularly occurs on the nutritarian program whether the patient follows a strict vegan diet or not. I describe the diet-style as a "vegetable-based" diet because the base of the pyramid is vegetables, not grains. Even though most animal products are excluded, it is not necessary to adopt a completely vegan diet to achieve the goals.

I offer patients the choice of adding two servings a week of low-fat fish, such as tilapia, flounder, sole, and scrod, as well as an egg-white omelet, once or twice each week. A few servings of very low-saturated-fat animal products each week can be interspersed with the vegan meals without diminishing the results achievable from the vegetable-based diet.

And lets not forget an obvious—but often overlooked—component of preventing and fighting diabetes is exercise. Let’s check back in with Dr. Fuhrman:

The most effective prescription for diabetes is exercise. An essential component of my prescription for diabetes is daily exercise; it is more important than daily medication. Two hundred calories a day of formal exercise on an incline treadmill and an elliptical machine are a great goal to shoot for. It is not an official recommendation of anyone except me.